Hey, Look at This

04/07/2010

The creepiest thing about this is that iTunes calls it "Alternative & Punk."

It's tough adjusting to parenthood. Most of us find spend the first months stupid with sleeplessness, rocked with doubt, and terrified by how abruptly we have to confront everything we don't know. Eventually the shock begins to abate, and we settle more comfortably into the care and nurturing of our children. Their schedules stabilize. Their needs become reasonably predictable. Eventually they grow into charming little people instead of endless sucking vortexes of endless sucking, and the work of keeping them is rewarded by the pleasure of their company.

It's not so complicated, it starts to seem, as we initially feared it would be.

And then somebody sends you this. And that's when shit gets real.

My mother sent Charlie this CD. I want you to think about this for a second. My mother. Who loves me. I didn't vet the package before handing it over to Charlie to open. It's from my mother, after all. How objectionable could it truly be?

What? You didn't catch this on its original 1994 blockbuster release? Allow me to walk you through it. Share my pain. Enjoy.

There's "Ice Ice Mickey." You know in the original when Good Sir Vanilla is describing a hail of bullets ripping through...something or other? I kind of forget because I can never keep up. When he gets there I'm always still stuck on the line where he talks about waxing a chump like a candle, like...what? Anyway, I think there's something in the song about drugs and guns and something about bacon and bikinis, maybe? Well, whatever it is, Mickey don't play that, homies. I mean hummies.

Then we have a parody, "Whoomp (There It Went)," apparently about Donald Duck's birthday party going horribly awry. Please note the appearance of the song's original artists, Tag Team, backing a rollicking tale of, I don't know, some shit about a cake and maybe a piñata, who knows? and probably Pluto, that irrepressible scamp, and possibly a brace of mallard hookers. Hey, Tag Team. How'd this particular career move work out for you guys?

Another parody of a popular song is "Whatta Mouse." Salt 'N' Pepa's original praises the eponymous mighty good man, who's "got the right potion / Baby, rub it down and make it smooth like lotion / Yeah, the ritual, highway to heaven / From seven to seven he's got me open like Seven Eleven." Minnie Mouse's revised version...does not, from which I can only conclude that Mickey Mouse isn't half the fantabulous cocksman Disney'd like us to believe.

Did you know Whoopi Goldberg can rap? Don't feel bad about that yawning gap in your knowledge, because, hey, she can't. But she can...talk, I guess, about chasing one's tail, scratching one's fleas, and other quasi-canine pursuits. Never fear, the controversial verse about licking one's own testicles has been mercifully expurgated.

Stop. Hammer time. And now that you've put your hammer through its good and useful paces, please handle those CD shards carefully as you dispose of them once and for all. Unless, that is, the contents of the disc have made you saw desperately at your wrists with the sharpest of the pieces, desiring only the eternal quiet of the grave.

Surprisingly, there are those who disagree with my opinion of Mickey Unrapped. At the time of the CD's release, Entertainment Weekly approved. Nostalgia abounds in those who were not so fortunate as to have The Magic of Abba as their first album — I wore that vinyl out, y'all — but who were brainwashed at such a tender age that even now, years later, they continue to maintain that "the uniqueness of [Disney characters as
rappers] does not wear off before the end of the disc." And even today there are reviewers at Amazon.com who like this collection. "This is the BEST kid's music CD I have ever heard." "GREAT C.D. NOT JUST FOR KIDS BECAUSE I AM DEFINATELY NOT A KID." "I LOVE this CD and I'm not just saying that because I repeatedly slam my head in the door for fun and may have sustained mild brain damage." I have taken editorial liberty with that last, but I totally bet it's true, and isn't that kind of pleasant blue-skying what product reviews are for?

Oh, and Charlie likes it, no surprise there.

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, which preserves the most preposterous shit like blowfly larvae in amber, I found a contemporary article about the CD's release. "Mark Jaffe, vice president of Walt Disney Records, expects major crossover appeal," according to the LA Times way back when. "Rob Marriott, an editor at the Source, the leading national rap music
magazine, doesn't see the album succeeding with a crossover audience,
however." Marriott added, "It's a safe bet we won't be reviewing it."

"Jack Thompson, the Miami attorney who led the anti-obscenity crusade
against Miami rap group 2 Live Crew...has a reservation about 'Mickey Unrapped,' however. 'Disney doing a rap album is like Mother Teresa wearing lace garters,' he said." Having heard the album in question, I can retroactively assure Mr. Thompson that is absolutely nothing at all like that. Disney doing a rap album is more like Mother Theresa wearing lace garters, giving Luther Campbell a lap dance, and subsequently being defecated on by Satan, with the proceedings later being narrated by MC Whoopi, to be punctuated in post-production by grown men making anguished dog noises.

I have no idea what I meant by that, either. I'm just trying to tell you it's bad.

There's apparently an effort afoot by Disney to modernize Mickey Mouse, to re-imagine the company's flagship character to make him more relevant for today's more sophisticated (read: kill-hungry) young audience:

The first glimmer of this will be the introduction next year of a new
video game, Epic Mickey, in which the formerly squeaky clean character
can be cantankerous and cunning, as well as heroic, as he traverses a
forbidding wasteland.

Epic Mickey...is set in a “cartoon
wasteland” where Disney’s forgotten and retired creations live. The
chief inhabitant is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a cartoon character Walt
Disney created in 1927 as a precursor to Mickey but ultimately
abandoned in a dispute with Universal Studios. In the game, Oswald has
become bitter and envious of Mickey’s popularity. The game also
features a disemboweled, robotic Donald Duck and a “twisted, broken,
dangerous” version of Disneyland’s
“It’s a Small World.” Using paint and thinner thrown from a magic
paintbrush, Mickey must stop the Phantom Blot overlord, gain the trust
of Oswald and save the day. [I totally hope he gets it in Oswald's eyes. — Ed.]

...Players can either behave in an entirely happy way and help other
characters — and have an easier go of it in the wasteland — or choose
more selfish, destructive behavior with a harsher outcome, including a
Mickey that starts to physically resemble a rat.

But until Disney unleashes the squeaky violent badass they've promised, I'll just have to be satisfied by my fantasies of this guy coming for every single Disney employee who had anything to do with this CD, from Michael D. Eisner on down.

Comments

The creepiest thing about this is that iTunes calls it "Alternative & Punk."

It's tough adjusting to parenthood. Most of us find spend the first months stupid with sleeplessness, rocked with doubt, and terrified by how abruptly we have to confront everything we don't know. Eventually the shock begins to abate, and we settle more comfortably into the care and nurturing of our children. Their schedules stabilize. Their needs become reasonably predictable. Eventually they grow into charming little people instead of endless sucking vortexes of endless sucking, and the work of keeping them is rewarded by the pleasure of their company.

It's not so complicated, it starts to seem, as we initially feared it would be.

And then somebody sends you this. And that's when shit gets real.

My mother sent Charlie this CD. I want you to think about this for a second. My mother. Who loves me. I didn't vet the package before handing it over to Charlie to open. It's from my mother, after all. How objectionable could it truly be?

What? You didn't catch this on its original 1994 blockbuster release? Allow me to walk you through it. Share my pain. Enjoy.

There's "Ice Ice Mickey." You know in the original when Good Sir Vanilla is describing a hail of bullets ripping through...something or other? I kind of forget because I can never keep up. When he gets there I'm always still stuck on the line where he talks about waxing a chump like a candle, like...what? Anyway, I think there's something in the song about drugs and guns and something about bacon and bikinis, maybe? Well, whatever it is, Mickey don't play that, homies. I mean hummies.

Then we have a parody, "Whoomp (There It Went)," apparently about Donald Duck's birthday party going horribly awry. Please note the appearance of the song's original artists, Tag Team, backing a rollicking tale of, I don't know, some shit about a cake and maybe a piñata, who knows? and probably Pluto, that irrepressible scamp, and possibly a brace of mallard hookers. Hey, Tag Team. How'd this particular career move work out for you guys?

Another parody of a popular song is "Whatta Mouse." Salt 'N' Pepa's original praises the eponymous mighty good man, who's "got the right potion / Baby, rub it down and make it smooth like lotion / Yeah, the ritual, highway to heaven / From seven to seven he's got me open like Seven Eleven." Minnie Mouse's revised version...does not, from which I can only conclude that Mickey Mouse isn't half the fantabulous cocksman Disney'd like us to believe.

Did you know Whoopi Goldberg can rap? Don't feel bad about that yawning gap in your knowledge, because, hey, she can't. But she can...talk, I guess, about chasing one's tail, scratching one's fleas, and other quasi-canine pursuits. Never fear, the controversial verse about licking one's own testicles has been mercifully expurgated.

Stop. Hammer time. And now that you've put your hammer through its good and useful paces, please handle those CD shards carefully as you dispose of them once and for all. Unless, that is, the contents of the disc have made you saw desperately at your wrists with the sharpest of the pieces, desiring only the eternal quiet of the grave.

Surprisingly, there are those who disagree with my opinion of Mickey Unrapped. At the time of the CD's release, Entertainment Weekly approved. Nostalgia abounds in those who were not so fortunate as to have The Magic of Abba as their first album — I wore that vinyl out, y'all — but who were brainwashed at such a tender age that even now, years later, they continue to maintain that "the uniqueness of [Disney characters as
rappers] does not wear off before the end of the disc." And even today there are reviewers at Amazon.com who like this collection. "This is the BEST kid's music CD I have ever heard." "GREAT C.D. NOT JUST FOR KIDS BECAUSE I AM DEFINATELY NOT A KID." "I LOVE this CD and I'm not just saying that because I repeatedly slam my head in the door for fun and may have sustained mild brain damage." I have taken editorial liberty with that last, but I totally bet it's true, and isn't that kind of pleasant blue-skying what product reviews are for?

Oh, and Charlie likes it, no surprise there.

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, which preserves the most preposterous shit like blowfly larvae in amber, I found a contemporary article about the CD's release. "Mark Jaffe, vice president of Walt Disney Records, expects major crossover appeal," according to the LA Times way back when. "Rob Marriott, an editor at the Source, the leading national rap music
magazine, doesn't see the album succeeding with a crossover audience,
however." Marriott added, "It's a safe bet we won't be reviewing it."

"Jack Thompson, the Miami attorney who led the anti-obscenity crusade
against Miami rap group 2 Live Crew...has a reservation about 'Mickey Unrapped,' however. 'Disney doing a rap album is like Mother Teresa wearing lace garters,' he said." Having heard the album in question, I can retroactively assure Mr. Thompson that is absolutely nothing at all like that. Disney doing a rap album is more like Mother Theresa wearing lace garters, giving Luther Campbell a lap dance, and subsequently being defecated on by Satan, with the proceedings later being narrated by MC Whoopi, to be punctuated in post-production by grown men making anguished dog noises.

I have no idea what I meant by that, either. I'm just trying to tell you it's bad.

There's apparently an effort afoot by Disney to modernize Mickey Mouse, to re-imagine the company's flagship character to make him more relevant for today's more sophisticated (read: kill-hungry) young audience:

The first glimmer of this will be the introduction next year of a new
video game, Epic Mickey, in which the formerly squeaky clean character
can be cantankerous and cunning, as well as heroic, as he traverses a
forbidding wasteland.

Epic Mickey...is set in a “cartoon
wasteland” where Disney’s forgotten and retired creations live. The
chief inhabitant is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a cartoon character Walt
Disney created in 1927 as a precursor to Mickey but ultimately
abandoned in a dispute with Universal Studios. In the game, Oswald has
become bitter and envious of Mickey’s popularity. The game also
features a disemboweled, robotic Donald Duck and a “twisted, broken,
dangerous” version of Disneyland’s
“It’s a Small World.” Using paint and thinner thrown from a magic
paintbrush, Mickey must stop the Phantom Blot overlord, gain the trust
of Oswald and save the day. [I totally hope he gets it in Oswald's eyes. — Ed.]

...Players can either behave in an entirely happy way and help other
characters — and have an easier go of it in the wasteland — or choose
more selfish, destructive behavior with a harsher outcome, including a
Mickey that starts to physically resemble a rat.

But until Disney unleashes the squeaky violent badass they've promised, I'll just have to be satisfied by my fantasies of this guy coming for every single Disney employee who had anything to do with this CD, from Michael D. Eisner on down.